Mascots Part 2: The Future of Brand Mascots Is Already Happening in Asia

Tony the Tiger sold cereal. The Kool-Aid Man smashed through walls. The M&M’s argued with each other. The character could be funny, memorable and instantly recognisable – but it was still basically an actor in a 30-second commercial.

Today, that role looks increasingly old-fashioned. Brand characters can now talk back, react to trends, actively communicate with the audience, appear across digital platforms, turn up in physical spaces and even follow you around your phone screen while you use completely different apps.

Last time, we looked at the past and present of brand mascots. But what if we look ahead?
There is a place, where all of this is taken to a completely next level. And if you want a glimpse of a parallel world of mascots, of where mascots are heading next, look east.

A prefecture. A train line. An airport. A bank. A police department. A museum. A local vegetable.
In Japan, all of these can have a character.

The phenomenon is so widespread that there is a whole category for regional mascots: yuru-kyara. The scale is almost absurd. At the 2015 Yuru-kyara Grand Prix, 1,727 characters entered the competition, generating more than 50 million online votes. And this was not a convention for a tiny subculture: almost 77,000 people attended the event in person.

Hello Kitty is probably the clearest example of what happens when a character stops behaving like a mascot and starts behaving like an entire world.

She was first created for Sanrio products in the 1970s, originally appearing on a small coin purse. Her popularity quickly took her far beyond that original product category. Today, Hello Kitty appears in around 50,000 products annually across 130 countries and regions, from fashion and homeware to electronics, entertainment and countless collaborations.
Today, calling Hello Kitty just a mascot feels absurd.

She does not really advertise one thing. She can represent a collection, a collaboration, a store, a game, a fashion line or an entire experience while remaining unmistakably herself.

That is one of the crucial differences between a traditional mascot and a character IP. A mascot usually belongs to a brand. A character like Hello Kitty can become a brand in her own right.

And Sanrio did not stop with one character. Hello Kitty exists alongside a huge universe of characters – My Melody, Kuromi, Cinnamoroll, Pompompurin, Badtz-Maru and many others – each with their own personality, visual language and fan base. The character is no longer an accessory to the brand system. The characters are the system.

LINE FRIENDS is a character brand originally born from messaging stickers on the LINE app. And it’s a perfect example.

Their characters were tiny illustrations designed to help people communicate everyday emotions. But because they lived inside people's conversations, they quickly became familiar personalities rather than static brand graphics. LINE describes the journey itself as a transformation "from a LINE platform character to a global brand."

That trajectory is fascinating because it runs in the opposite direction from traditional advertising. Old-school mascots started with the brand and were pushed towards the audience. LINE FRIENDS characters became part of people’s digital lives rather than simply appearing in front of them.

And this is where Asian character culture starts to look less like a niche aesthetic and more like a preview of what digital branding might become.

Picture a brand mascot you genuinely like. Now name the brand it belongs to. Most likely you will. Because those mascots, who are genuinely effective, have a strong connection with the company they represent.

But think about some local, smaller mascots. Can you name the brand it represents? For a lot of characters, it’s not the case. People remember some cheerful animated blob – and go blank on who was actually paying for it. It's the oldest failure in advertising: everyone loved the spot, nobody could tell you whose it was.

And it turns out to be the norm, not the exception. In a global Ipsos and JKR study of more than 26,000 people, only 16% of the mascots tested reached the top "Gold" tier of distinctiveness – the level where a character is reliably, almost automatically linked back to its brand. The other 84% were doing something closer to entertainment than branding.

There is no single reason for this. It is the result of several things happening at once.

There is a long-established culture of character-based communication. There is a strong tradition of kawaii and anthropomorphism. There is a huge entertainment and licensing ecosystem built around characters. And digital platforms such as LINE have made characters part of everyday communication rather than something people only encounter in advertising.

Most importantly, the boundaries between branding, entertainment, commerce and communication are unusually fluid.
A character can be a sticker in the morning, a plush toy in the afternoon, a shop decoration in the evening and the protagonist of a collaboration the next day. The same personality can move between digital and physical spaces without needing to be reinvented each time.

That is exactly the kind of flexibility modern brands increasingly need.

We created a friendly, expressive mascot with a range of micro-emotions – joy, curiosity, surprise, satisfaction – so it could react to different situations rather than simply repeat one pose. It works as a sticker pack for digital communication, but also appears on shopping bags, pastry boxes, cups and banners.

That means the character does not disappear when the advertising ends. It travels with the customer.

A pastry box can have a personality. A shopping bag can make a joke. A sticker can become part of a conversation. The brand's character can move from the screen into the physical world and back again.

For a concept built around modern Asian convenience, that felt particularly natural. The character became a small cultural bridge of its own: familiar enough to feel welcoming, distinctive enough to give Liliko its own personality.

The most interesting Asian character brands don't seem particularly concerned with keeping the character in one box. A character can be a mascot, a sticker, a toy, a digital companion, a shop decoration, a social media personality and a licensed IP – sometimes all at once.

And because people already understand characters as a form of communication, the transition between those roles feels natural.

That gives brands an enormous playground.

Thinking about a brand character of your own – or wondering whether your brand needs one at all? Get in touch with our team, and let's work out whether a mascot would earn its place in your identity, and what it would take to make it genuinely yours.